Ray Ison, Professor in Systems at the UK Open University since 1994, is a member of the Applied Systems Thinking in Practice Group. From 2008-15 he also developed and ran the Systemic Governance Research Program at Monash University, Melbourne. In this blog he reflects on contemporary issues from a systemic perspective.

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

It is with great sadness that we are writing to you to announce that Jay
W. Forrester, Professor of Management Emeritus at MIT, has died at the
age of 98.

A full obituary is now available in the New York Times. Further information is available via the System Dynamics Society homepage.

Many of us have memories we cherish and want to share about Jay and we
know that members of the System Dynamics community are posting their
thoughts and reflections on various social media. We would ask everyone
to consider visiting the webpage
dedicated to Jay and click on “comments” to write there about how Jay
touched your life. This page is for us all. Write what you want others
to see and hear. We will all gain from our memories of Jay.

Jay founded what became the field of System Dynamics in 1956 and has had
a profound and lasting influence on it throughout its 60-year history. A lifelong innovator, Jay was a pioneer in digital computing
and helped create the computer age in which we all live today. Trained
in electrical engineering, Jay came to MIT in 1939, where he worked on
feedback control servomechanisms during World War II. After the war, Jay
directed the MIT Digital Computer Laboratory, where he led the design
and construction of Whirlwind I,
one of the world’s first high-speed digital computers. He invented and
holds the patent for magnetic core memory, the dominant form of random
access memory (RAM) for decades (even travelling to the moon with the
Apollo astronauts), until it was eventually replaced by semiconductors. Whirlwind became the basis for many innovations, from numerically controlled machine tools to SAGE, the first integrated continental air defense system.

Invited to join the faculty of the MIT Sloan School of Management in
1956, Jay created the field of system dynamics to apply engineering
concepts of feedback systems and digital simulation to understand what
he famously called “the counterintuitive behavior of social systems.”
His ground-breaking 1961 book, Industrial Dynamics, remains a clear and
relevant statement of philosophy and methodology in the field. His
later books and his numerous articles broke new ground in our
understanding of complex human systems and policy problems. Jay officially retired in 1989, but continued his work unabated, focusing on promoting the use of system dynamics in K-12 education.

"The question is whether the tragedy of November 8, following that of
Brexit, can help us to avoid what comes next. In other words, can we get
away from both utopias, that of the Globe as well as that of the
Nation? What we need instead is an Earth that is solid, realistic, and
durable. Alas, at present the ecological crisis is the elephant in the
room, and yet it is as if nothing has happened, as if the choice were
still between marching bravely into the future or clinging dearly to the
past. Trump and his followers have even gone so far as to deny the very
existence of this crisis."